By the time I got the treats out of the box Millie showed up. Mom tried to get a picture of us with the bag standing up but this was the best we could do.

Okay mom, we’ll stop touching the bag if you just take the picture.

Mom says you will just have to go to the Chewy.com site to read all the details about these treats. The treats vary in size but are about 1″ square on average. Of course mom had to torture us and make us pose with the treats right in front of us before we could taste them.

If I don’t look at it I can resist temptation longer.

Please say okay mom!

Finally she said “Okay”!

Something funny happened when we were released to eat our treats. Millie scarfed hers up so fast mom couldn’t get a picture of it but by surprise Walter didn’t eat his right away.

This is fantastic!These smell different than anything I’ve ever eaten before.

Let me give it a good sniff first.

I need to break this up a little first.

Walter took so much time to eat his one piece that mom had enough time to take a video of it.

As you can see even though it took Walter a while, in the end he loved it. There is no question this is an 8 paws up (because that is all the paws we have) great treat. Since that first taste Walter hasn’t hesitated at all to wolf down any that are sent his way.

Disclaimer: We received one bag of Natural Balance Wild Pursuit Lamb Lung Bites Grain-Free Dog Treats from Chewy.com to review. We did not receive any monetary compensation for this review and will receive no additional benefits for barking about the product or the company. The opinions in this review are the honest opinions of ours.

When you start buying yarn eventually you start receiving catalogs that have yarn and kits for all kinds of things. My husband was perusing a Herrschners catalog and found an afghan he though would look good in our family room for the holidays.

One of the things we liked about this afghan was that it didn’t scream Christmas and could be used for most of the winter. I ordered the kit late last winter and didn’t start working on it until August after some other crochet projects were completed. I started with making a swatch to make sure the afghan would come out close to the expected size of 43″ x 50″.

Starting the afghan on a nice August day.

The afghan is worked using two strands of Herrschners® 2-Ply Afghan yarn. This is a very nice, soft, acrylic yarn. You start working the main body of the afghan with some open work throughout.

Still working on the body of the afghan

It was a fairly easy pattern to follow that really only required serious counting on the first row of each set of open work. From their you can count relative to the start of each open work set.

Afghan open work detail

It felt good when I had the bulk of the afghan done and then started on the outer border which is done in rounds. I was working hard to get it done before Christmas but on Christmas eve I ran out of red yarn when I was just 83 stitches from finishing!

Arghhh! Just 83 stitches from the end I ran out of red yarn!

I ordered the one skein I would need to finish this project (and bought another kit to work on) and waited impatiently for it to come. Since it was the holiday weeks it took a little longer than usual to arrive but that gave me time to weave in the ends on the afghan.

Once the skein of red yarn came I finished the outer round and began planning the cross stitch in the white border. I marked the beginning of each holly cross stitch with a stitch marker and began working the cross stitch. The pattern said to space them 2″ apart with meant there were 10 on the long sides and 7 on the short ends.

Final step – add the French knot holly berries

I’m glad I’ve done some cross stitch in the past so it was really quite easy and did not worry me at all to do them.

Holly cross stitch with French knot holly berries

I worked in the ends on each one as I went along and did my best to have a clean and neat back side.

A neat back of the holly cross stitch

I finished the afghan on January 2, 2016 and gave it a test drive.

First test drive of the Christmas Holly Afghan

It is surprisingly warm, soft and light. You don’t feel weighted down laying under it. This is my first afghan that we are keeping and I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Close up of corner of Christmas Holly Afghan

Christmas Holly Afghan

While I was snapping pictures of the afghan Walter heard the camera and wanted to get in on the act.

Don’t you need my help with the pictures mom?

My little super model didn’t want to be left out of a photo shoot. I would definitely recommend this kit for an advanced beginner to intermediate skilled hooker. There is no instruction given on how to do the cross stitch or French knots but all of that can easily be found online. I’m happy with how this afghan turned out and expect to enjoy it for years to come.

Hi everyone! It’s Millie & Walter here. We sure have a lot of great friends that sent us some wonderful cards for the holidays.

Thanks for sending Walter & I so many beautiful cards.

We love all our cards whether they came by snail mail or email.

As usual our pawrents came a distant second on the card count compared to us but we have to say that most of their cards came from doctors and companies they do business with.

E-card from our pawrents dentist

Seriously dad…a car care company?!

It’s just a little pathetic what lengths our pawrents will go to up their card count. Well here is the final result.

Final Christmas Card Count Board for 2015

As you can see we totally kicked butt on our pawrents. Here is a look at all our cards (including our pawrents).

Can you pick out your card?

Thanks again to everyone that sent us a card!

We love participating in the Christmas card exchange and seeing all the beautiful cards.

Don’t forget to start sending us your stamps when you think you’ve received all your Christmas cards. Just leave a comment if you need our mailing address. Thanks to those of you that have already sent your stamps to us.

Hi everyone. It’s Walter here. With all the packages that came to our house during the holidays there were lots of things in them to keep the contents from rattling around. Mom and dad always let me have the bubble wrap, if there is any, to play with.

Here is a little video to give you an idea of all the fun I have. The video is supposed to be embedded below but at the time of publishing this post it doesn’t seem to be working.

Okay just a few words…Millie was stretched out on the dog bed so Walter squeezed in under my chair to lay in the sun puddle. It took some acrobatics to get this picture while sitting in the chair and not wake them up.

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